“It makes you nervous when you start talking about racism”: Shining light on teacher educators’ experiences of anti-racist pedagogy in Australian teacher education

ABSTRACT

Teacher educators have a significant responsibility in promoting anti-racist pedagogy and guiding preservice teachers to engage in critical self-examination regarding dominant narratives. However, many teacher education programmes fall short of adequately equipping aspiring teachers for diverse classrooms as they often perpetuate a predominantly white system and curricula. Informed by Critical Pedagogy and underpinned by a lens of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, this paper discusses the experiences of teacher educators facilitating anti-racist pedagogy within teacher education programmes at Australian universities. Semi-structured interviews were held with 23 experienced teacher educators employed at universities across Australia. Data reveal teacher educators’ efforts to promote anti-racist pedagogy are fraught with challenges when attempting to break the silence surrounding racism, with support for anti-racist pedagogy inconsistent amongst colleagues and within institutional structures. Teacher educators who actively embrace anti-racist pedagogy require resilience and a strong dedication to ongoing critical reflection. The findings have relevance for teacher education efforts not only in Australia, but also in countries where teacher education programmes continue to be predominantly centred on whiteness.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racist pedagogy
• teacher education
• racism
• whiteness
• critical pedagogy

Teacher educators play an important role in instilling anti-racist pedagogy and encouraging critical reflection on positionality in relation to constructions of race and dominant narratives (King, 2022). Teaching is not apolitical (Goodwin & Darity, 2019) and, as such, teacher educators have a responsibility to teach not only content, but also to vigorously foster debate on social and political alternatives (Ladson-Billings, 2021).

Yet most teacher education fails to prepare preservice teachers for the realities of multicultural classroom due to the recreation of whiteness which offers a white system, white teaching practices, and a white curriculum resulting in education being designed “by, for, and about white people” (Harris et al., 2020, p. 204). Although teachers’ experiences of race and racism have received attention, less research has addressed how teacher educators deal with these themes in teacher preparation units (Chang-Bacon, 2022). To address this gap, this article centres the role of teacher educators in instilling anti-racist pedagogy in teacher preparation units at Australian universities.

Australia is an increasingly diverse nation, characterized by a rich tapestry of cultures and languages. First Nations Australians (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples) make up 3.8% of the Australian population, of which approximately 27.6% of residents were born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2022). There over 150 different First Nations languages spoken, and more than one-fifth of the population use a language other than English at home (ABS, 2022). Yet racism within Australia continues to negatively affect First Nations Australians, with communities identifying with a non-dominant culture, religion, or ethnicity also experiencing discrimination and reduced opportunities (Ben et al., 2022). Whiteness, arising from a shameful history of colonization and discrimination, shapes all aspects of Australian life (Vass, 2017). The dominant, middle-class, white, Anglocentric culture controls linguistic, educational, political, and economic matters, resulting in a chronic occurrence of monolingualism and white privilege which continue to disempower diverse communities (Wynter-Hoyte et al., 2019).

The Australian education system and its curricula, as well as the discourse and practices which uphold its status, support whiteness and fail to examine structural racism (Guenther et al., 2021). Academic success and knowledge are measured against Anglocentric paradigms, with English language use linked to social privilege or disadvantage (Dovchin, 2020). Hegemonic narratives centre Indigenous Australian education through a deficit lens and government policy fails to truly support First Nations identities or languages (Woodroffe, 2020).

Moreover, the racialized labelling of students “Culturally and Linguistically Diverse” (CaLD) supports whiteness as the normative standard, leading to a binary relationship between those who are considered different from the norm and those who are not (Rowan et al., 2021). Labelling ignores the impact of intersectionality and precludes Anglo-Celtic Australians from being culturally and linguistically diverse, thereby upholding the default dominant group (Mousaferiadis, 2020).

Teacher education programmes continue to lack criticality and integration of theory on racism and whiteness, with teacher educators’ cultural illiteracies evident in the perceived valuing of cultural diversity while continuing to privilege traditional white curricula and systems (Harris et al., 2020). Teacher education recentres whiteness and white fragility when power is given to preservice teachers to negatively evaluate teacher educators who seek to encourage critical examination of race, racism, and whiteness (Aronson & Meyers, 2020; DiAngelo, 2011).

Literature review

Teacher preparation not only entails teacher educators’ building preservice teachers’ capacities to address learners’ academic, socioemotional, and sociocultural needs, but also decentring the whiteness within the education system (Carter Andrews 2021).

Addressing race and racism in teacher education

Yet Goodwin and Darity’s (2019) analysis of 1796 articles related to teacher education found only four articles attended to race specifically. Exploring how race and racism are addressed within mandated teacher education units, Chang-Bacon (2022, p. 15) interviewed 33 teacher educators and found while participants “generally affirmed” the importance of teaching on race and racism, upon reflection they realized their units did not specifically address these themes. To avoid dialogue on race and racism, racial proxies focused on broader notions of difference by highlighting language or culture, but these did little to disrupt power dynamics (Chang-Bacon, 2022). Janes (2023) survey of 209 teacher educators working in Australian teacher education found over a quarter did not include non-dominant or Indigenous Australian perspectives in their units. Moreover, over a fifth did not examine systematic issues of whiteness or dominant culture privilege and more than a ten percent reported not promoting anti-racist pedagogy (Janes, 2023).

Yared et al’.s scoping review of racial bias and racism within Australian schools identified four themes pertinent to teacher education programmes: “a lack of teacher confidence and competency regarding racial issues, white normativity, colour-blindness, and silencing” (2020, p. 1505). Practices were found to amplify whiteness, with educators operating through a white normative lens in which white ideologies and culture were normalized and privileged, positioning whiteness as hierarchical over other racialized groups. Colour-blind practices focused on sameness, denying, or ignoring race, and claiming racism was not an issue. Silencing was found to be used in response to racism, yet it was inadequate and had the opposite effect of perpetuating racist incidents (Yared et al., 2020). Likewise, Shim’s (2020) research investigated relationships with race and racism within teacher preparation and found even though preservice teachers had anti-racist agendas, they experienced resentment, anxiety, and frustration when engaging with critical self-reflection on race and whiteness in teacher education units as it was not a linear process, as first perceived, and therefore progress felt unempowering, with critical reflection deemed exhausting and uncomfortable (Shim, 2020).

Ladson-Billings (1998) influential work on Critical Race Theory shines light on intricate relationship between whiteness, the legacy of colonization, and education (Mills & Unsworth, 2018). Critical Race Theory (CRT) views race and racism as normalized, pervasive, and fluid which does little to motivate society to acknowledge and address its existence (Cole, 2017). In the Australian education context, CRT can be applied to highlight hegemonic policies which devalue diverse cultural knowledge and agency whilst sustaining inequalities and an imbalance of power for non-dominant cultural communities (Ford, 2013).

As culture, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and “but not always” skin colour can stand for race (Lentin, 2008, p. 491), racism is a complex construct reflecting more than discrimination or prejudice solely due to visible traits, with new racisms directed towards groups that are perceived to differ from mainstream dominant norms (Dovchin, 2020). Without active intervention and critical reflection, individuals may continue to passively perpetuate racist beliefs and attitudes. Tatum’s racism conveyor belt analogy highlights “passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway … But unless they are actively anti-racist – they will find themselves carried along with the others” (2000, p. 67).

Whiteness in teacher preparation

As a social construction, whiteness reflects structural ideologies of racial hegemony which favour some individuals while denying others access to resources and opportunities (Utt & Tochluk, 2020). Whiteness may be seen in the “white experience”, with groups associated with whiteness enjoying relatively more privilege and power compared to others (Jugert et al., 2022, p. 3). White identity is held as the implicit standard of normalcy so that those who do not associate with this identity are subject to being viewed as others.

To facilitate meaningful dialogue on race and racism, teacher educators first need to critically reflect on whiteness and white privilege. Yet there remains silence on whiteness so the act of pushing for critical dialogue can be fraught with anxiety for teacher educators (Schulz & Fane, 2015). Discussion on race and whiteness may be avoided for fear of being seen as inciting racism or discomfort when exploring racial identities (Garlough & Savitz, 2022).

Teacher educators may seek to avoid addressing race and racism by evading race and culture, although this does little to sustain cultural capital or centre diversity as an asset (Lopez, 2017). The refusal to acknowledge constructions of race and race-evasive ideology further exacerbates racism by concealing it and upholding the power of the privileged (Kishimoto, 2018). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies seek to challenge the curricularization of racism by highlighting how knowledge disciplines predominantly revolve around the entrenched norms of white, middle-class, monolingual perspectives regarding who can possess knowledge, what can be known, and how actions should be undertaken (Paris, 2021). For teacher educators seeking to build criticality in preservice teachers, dialogue on hegemonic narratives and whiteness is unavoidable.

A critical move towards anti-racist pedagogy

A critical approach to cultural diversity is required to disrupt stereotypes and diminish bias, particularly as the probability of “othering” increases when teacher education fails to provide opportunities for preservice teachers to critically reflect on identity, positionality, and the social, economic, and political context (White, 2022). Anti-racist pedagogy, drawn from CRT, fosters race‐awareness, understandings of power and privilege, and builds consciousness as to how race permeates society and individuals’ lives (Basque & Britto, 2019). Anti-racist pedagogy is realized through awareness and critical self-reflection of one’s social position, curriculum design which address themes of race and inequality, the explicit teaching of anti-racist pedagogy throughout all units, and an anti-racist approach within institutions which link to the local community (Kishimoto, 2018).

Anti-racist praxis is further supported by developing intersectional identity and acknowledging how race and racism intersect with gender, class, and sexuality amongst other factors (Twine, 2004). Racial literacy examines the impact of whiteness and positions racial identity as a social construct (Twine, 2004). Teacher educators who demonstrate racial literacy critique privilege and microaggressive behaviours, engage critically with history, and demonstrate accountability across race (Utt & Tochluk, 2020). As teacher educators can play a significant role in developing preservice teachers’ criticality and understanding of anti-racist pedagogy, this paper focuses on the research question:

What are teacher educators’ experiences of instilling anti-racist pedagogy in teacher education units at Australian universities?

Methodology

Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 2000) and a focus on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (Paris, 2021) serve as the foundation for this qualitative research. Critical Pedagogy epistemology holds knowledge as culturally negotiated, temporal, and shaped by society, with different forms of privileged over others (Kitts, 2022). Education is positioned as building knowledge yet perpetuating social inequities, such as oppression, racism, and ableism, which support existing power structures (Yeh et al., 2020). This study, part of a larger four-year project on culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies within teacher education (Janes, 2023), reports on interview data from 23 teacher educators’ experiences of anti-racist pedagogy in teacher education units within Australia.

Ethics approval for the research was granted by the university’s Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval number 22,398). Potential participants were defined as teacher educators, working at teacher education providers in Australia, and listed with publicly displayed contact emails on their university webpage. A total of 23 experienced teacher educators (8 men, 14 women) participated in semi-structed interviews. Open questions, written with reference to the literature on culturally sustaining pedagogies, explored themes related to anti-racist pedagogy within teacher education. The participants worked at different universities within Australia. All but one interview was carried out online via Zoom, with the remainder conducted over the phone. Each interview typically lasted between 40 minutes to one hour.

The interview data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Through a critical lens, inductive and deductive data analysis was undertaken, with the data examined for salient themes pertaining to the experiences of teacher educators instilling anti-racist pedagogy within teacher education units. The determination of emerging codes was facilitated by using a non-linear iterative approach between data analysis and reflective practice. The data were then explored through a recursive process of analysing and reanalysing the codes and developing categories until inclusive themes were designated. Pseudonyms are used for confidentiality.

Peer-debriefing and daily journalling supported the management of researcher perspectives during data collection and analysis. Acknowledging bias as fundamentally intertwined within research, ongoing self-reflexivity and critical reflection on social, cultural, and historical forces further facilitated subjectivity awareness, as did the writing of memos.

Reflexivity

As a white cisgender female teacher educator who has experienced the advantages of white privilege, I am compelled to examine hegemonic narratives and to challenge the education inequity which I may have unknowingly helped perpetuate. Recognizing my own biases and experiences, this research should be viewed in light of my positionality as a teacher educator who has benefited from whiteness.

Findings

The data reveal three salient themes related to teacher educators’ experiences of anti-racist pedagogy in teacher education units at Australian universities. Firstly, when facilitating anti-racist pedagogy interviewees faced challenges in disrupting the silence surrounding race and racism; Secondly, they experienced inconsistent support for anti-racist pedagogy from colleagues and institutional systems; Thirdly, interviewees who actively engaged with anti-racist pedagogy demonstrated resilience and a deep commitment to continual critical reflection.

Challenging the silence surrounding racism within Australia

The data centre dilemmas for teacher educators who adopt anti-racist pedagogy within a system which is often silent on Australia’s colonial history. Interview responses foreground frustration on the complacency of systemic racism within Australia, with social injustices perceived to be easily ignored when lacking personal impact.

We’re in Australia, I guess the natural one is to talk about Aboriginal gaps, the educational gaps, the poverty gaps. I don’t want to make light of it, but they are issues that middle class people can ignore quite easily. And some policies even today maintain some of that. (Jenny)

Challenging the lack of dialogue surrounding racism within Australia requires teacher educators to disrupt negation surrounding social, structural, and systemic racism. Within Australia there exists a contradiction between celebrating multiculturalism and the silence on race, racism, and social inequities (Elias et al., 2020). Interviewees expressed concern over a white-washed version of history which perpetuates dominant narratives to deny Australia’s past. As a result, anti-racist dialogue was reportedly impacted by inadequate discussion on racism and the systemic injustices existing within Australia’s institutions.

The unfortunate thing is, I think because we are very Americanised, we go, “Yeah, look, in America they treat African Americans really badly. That’s really bad of them - we don’t have African Americans, so we don’t need to worry about it”. But we obviously need to have a discussion about how we treat Aboriginal people. And I think there’s a lot more we can do. It’s very good that we do the Acknowledgement of Country now, but often that’s all we do. What do we do on a daily basis or within our classes to make sure that we are ensuring that we show that as part of Black Lives Matter, that Aboriginal lives matter, and that there are significant numbers of Aboriginals who get killed in in prisons every year. (Ryan)

Teacher educators facilitating dialogue on racism need to overcome widespread complacency regarding issues which impact First Nations communities. Australian teacher education promotes a school curriculum which reflects government constructed visions, in which “racism as a term only appears five times in the Australian Curriculum, and only once in relation to First Nations Peoples” (Guenther et al., 2021, p. 616). As anti-racist pedagogy requires a reflection on bias and an uncomfortable acknowledgement that inherited beliefs or practices may be racist, encouraging critical reflexivity was considered to present a possible conflict for teacher educators.

It makes you nervous when you start talking about racism because when you use that word, people, students, teacher educators, colleagues, it’s a really sensitive issue, and we don’t want to admit that we’re racist, but we really are. And it’s a terrible revelation to actually think that you might be racist, and many don’t know how to react to it … Even the way that they acknowledge things is racist itself, and that’s so difficult to deal with in a 10 week course, where we are trying to create people who are sympathetic to the cause and they don’t realise that what they do and say in reaction to that can be racist and, in fact are, racist perspectives, because they’ve never been asked to think about it or they don’t want to think about it because it’s too challenging. (John)

Discriminatory perspectives inherited from dominant narratives do not align with anti-racist pedagogy. However, discussing race and racism can be sensitive, particularly as in place of the term race, Australia has championed the terms ethnicity and Indigeneity (Kowal & Watt, 2018). A reported predicament faced was the extent to which the ignorance around racism can be disrupted within a ten-week unit as preservice teachers firstly require a degree of critical consciousness to be capable of examining bias. Understanding and situating one’s positionality within the social, historical, cultural, and political sphere is crucial to the capacity to respond agentively in teaching (Liddicoat, 2022). Yet, as highlighted by responses, limiting discussion on racism fails to disrupt the status quo nor does it provide pedagogical space to explore experiences of bias. Additional challenges in confronting the silence surrounding racism were reported when teacher educators were faced with largely monocultural and monolingual cohorts.

If you’re trying to create a positive learning environment, you can’t ignore culture and you can’t ignore racism. One of the challenges of teaching in regional areas is that, a lot of times, students are going on practicum in classrooms which are predominantly white, and so what we get is a lot of “I will value all children” and that’s all the motherhood feel good fuzzy statements without digging down to think, “Okay, what’s that like when you’re actually in the classroom?” (Dawn)

Limited exposure to critical reflection on social, economic, and political contexts can mean the likelihood of othering increases as preservice teachers fail to recognize the intersections of positionality and identity and how they impact teaching and learners (White, 2022). Challenges exist in encouraging preservice teachers to critically examine the complexities behind race-evasiveness in which those who benefit from white privilege act as oblivious to social constructions of race.

I get a lot of students who say, “I don’t see colour or I want to treat all my students equally”. And so, one of the starting basic dialogues we have is the difference between equity versus equality and ensuring that they recognise that differences in their classroom are valuable and that’s how they teach and how they relate to students should be informed by that. (Brian)

Attempting to not see or deny race, by adopting a race-evasive approach, hinders anti-racist pedagogy. Race-evasive practices disadvantage learners and do not result in sufficient cultural or racial competency (Chang-Bacon, 2022; Yared et al., 2020). If learners are treated as assimilated against the normative standard, and culture, race, and language ignored, this overlooks rich and varied funds of knowledge and lived experiences (Ladson-Billings, 2021).

Furthermore, the data foreground unease surrounding disregard of whiteness as a benchmark when other narratives are viewed against this default setting. Emphasizing concern over normative standards which uphold whiteness, responses highlighted ignorance surrounding the term diversity, with “Liz” suggesting it is “often is a way often is a way of avoiding more uncomfortable terms like racism”.

What we mean by culturally diverse is so fascinating because I’ve worked at schools where they’ve said, “Oh, we have such a culturally diverse community”. But in fact, they were 95 percent Somali families that were going to that school, so arguably, it’s not a particularly culturally diverse school – it’s just that people feel more comfortable saying culturally diverse. (Liz)

When the term culturally diverse is used unquestionably in teacher education, without critical reflection on why a majority community are being compared against the default of whiteness, this presents further challenges for teacher educators. Labels such as Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) were perceived to highlight an othering against the default standard as such categories are socially constructed (Mousaferiadis, 2020). Within teacher education, denying race exists does little to disrupt dominant assumptions surrounding privileged language and knowledge.

Inconsistent support for anti-racist pedagogy

Interviewees enacting anti-racist pedagogy faced challenges when teacher educator colleagues were reported to be unsupportive. Responses centred frustration when teacher educator colleagues allegedly did not question their role in perpetuating dominant narratives, with comments indicating teacher educator colleagues may harbour entrenched bias.

There’s definitely attitudes out there. Once when I was a sessional, I was in the sessional room and some of the comments that came from other lecturers, I was absolutely astounded. So there’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, assumptions about students, and I think when the lecturers have that mindset, students pick up on it and the little jokes and things that go on. (Nicole)

Power is reproduced through language and discourse which can either benefit or disadvantage the representation given to different groups or communities. In this way, teacher preparation may be used as a system which seeks to uphold dominant narratives and exclude others though its policies and practices. As education within Australia is intwined with Australia’s racialized practices, teacher education has a crucial role to play in developing white Australians understanding and critique of the histories which have moulded their identity, social order, and sense of nation (Santoro, 2014). Resistance to a more socially justice approach may arise from teacher educators who do not view anti-racist pedagogy and the inclusion of non-dominant perspectives as relevant to their teaching.

I had a meeting today with someone who is a course coordinator for my subject, and I’d written that we need to include more social justice efforts for diversity, and he queried “Why would we need to do that?” Some of my colleagues taught as former teachers where there had very little diversity or they just expected that those students should integrate and do as everyone else does. There’s no real acknowledgement of their background. So it’s definitely encouraging fellow initial Teacher educators that diversity is important, that we do need to acknowledge that we are a multicultural society, and there are different perspectives to include. (Ryan)

Pedagogical and behaviour strategies are influenced by teacher educators’ situated perspective arising from their positionalities, values, perspectives, assumptions, and lived experiences. Supporting only assimilative goals over sustaining cultural and linguistic pluralism fails to disrupt white, monolingual and monocultural ideologies and an education system which upholds whiteness (Paris, 2021). Although teacher educators play an active role in disrupting preservice teachers’ understanding of dominant narratives, not all colleagues were reported to reflect on their own positionality and its influence on their pedagogical approach.

When I say that preservice teachers often come with limited understandings that reflect their worldview, that may be a middle class White Australian worldview or a working class or a sort of working poor with particular ideas about their place and others’ place in the world, we also see that in our teacher educators. (Susan)

Critical reflection on positionality, the continual self-examination and reflection of placing oneself within the world, is integral to social justice advocacy and anti-racist pedagogy. Critical teacher educators examine how others are positioned against assumed normative standards of whiteness (Philips et al., 2019). As racist attitudes were seen to prevail due to the legacy of colonization, interviewees considered embedding Black Lives Matter (BLM) content into teacher education units could promote dialogue on how to navigate oppressive practices. However, not all teacher educator colleagues were perceived to be supportive of this approach to facilitating anti-racist pedagogy.

I might have some colleagues that are very empathetic about BLM, they understand where it’s coming from and others that are very against everything it stands for, “It’s just another excuse, etc”, you know all the comments, so I really think it depends on the lecturer. (Lisa)

Teacher educators seeking to instil anti-racist pedagogy may face resistance within their faculty. The reported resistance may not be uncommon, with Shirodkar’s (2019, p. 4) analysis of 11,099 Australians across diverse cross sections of the population finding that “around 75 per cent of Australian participants hold an implicit bias against Indigenous Australians, with a third of Australians holding what might be considered a strong implicit bias”. This situates the significance of teacher educators in facilitating dialogue on racism and decolonization. In addition, interviewees expressed concern for anti-racist pedagogy when teacher education programmes are delivered in areas with high First Nations populations as initiating anti-racist dialogue was perceived sensitive and complicated.

There’s definitely a place, I don’t know, that’s not something that I explicitly talk about in any of my units that I teach. Yeah, I actually don’t. Our demographic is already one where 40 percent is Aboriginal - I don’t think that’s even a minority, I think that’s probably the largest identifiable group in the community. But the social situations, the political situations, there’s so many injustices both ongoing and historic, contextualising them and introducing them into teacher education is very complex. I’m not really sure how I do that. (Kelly)

Although current and past injustices present a dilemma of how to sensitively incorporate content without reviving trauma, teacher educators who sustain anti-racist pedagogy facilitate dialogue-centred pedagogy to combat superficial understandings, and to bring to the fore issues of whiteness, structural racism, and systemic injustices (Holmes et al., 2021). However, the data also highlight constraints faced by teacher educators when government institutions are perceived to offer inconsistent direction on anti-racist pedagogy.

I don’t see it coming through in any formal way from the Department of Education. I think they like to avoid any of those more controversial things like Indigenous rights - Who knew that was controversial?! They just want us to make sure that teachers can spell, right? I shouldn’t say that as that’s a simplistic reading, of course they want more than that, but there is this kind of tension between government and some of this activist work and its space within formal curriculum. (Liz)

The reported lack of focus on anti-racist pedagogy conflicts with teacher educators’ social justice agendas and may discourage the addressing of wider systemic issues as government institutions play a key role in setting educational standards across Australia.

Anti-racist pedagogy requires continual critical reflection and resilience

Linking Tatum’s racist conveyor belt analogy with the data, teacher educators may demonstrate passive racist behaviour (Tatum, 2000, p. 68) when they do not actively engage with anti-racist pedagogy within their units.

We’re moving on this conveyor belt regardless of whether we’re aware of it or not. And to fight oppressive systems, we actually have to stop and turn around and go the opposite direction, even if we’re not advancing racism because we’re still participating and existing in a racist system, then we’re still part of that system, part of that moving conveyor belt. (Andrew)

Although none of the 23 interviewees reported active racist behaviour, some potentially exhibited passive racist behaviour in that they identified racism was an issue but did not include anti-racist pedagogy in their teacher education units. In other words, although all respondents considered anti-racist pedagogy important in teacher education programmes, many had not considered how anti-racist pedagogy might be instilled in their units.

I think there’s a place for this sort of stuff [anti-racist pedagogy] in every unit, in every course. It is relevant to every subject area. It’s not normal that that would happen, and I haven’t given much thought about how it would happen, say, in maths. Whether you actually get into those debates about racism, I don’t know. It’s a very interesting question of actually what people are doing that and how they’re going about that, I haven’t given that much thought. (Nicole)

Binary terms which label teacher educators as racist or anti-racist are often unhelpful for anti-racist pedagogy as it requires an ongoing commitment and is a life-long journey (Shah & Coles, 2020). However, critical conversations can be overlooked if teacher educators assume anti-racist pedagogy is being covered in other units. This assumption can lead to a fragmented or incomplete understanding of anti-racist praxis and limit the depth of engagement. Even if a teacher educator believes addressing race and racism should be part of units in every teacher education programme, it does not necessarily mean that this belief translates into practice.

I think in general terms, race and racism “should” be addressed. In my experience, in talking with colleagues, the one mandatory course [Aboriginal Education] that’s now mandated in all preservice teacher education courses, is not geared that way. There is simply not enough time to go into the depths of racism and the history of it and the social context and the nuances and how it emerges and all the issues and stuff, in addition to providing teachers with, let’s be honest, survival skills. (Rachel)

Content-heavy curriculum may hinder the inclusion of robust dialogue on racism. Interviewees reported anti-racist pedagogy was impacted due to the time and space constraints in standalone units, with reduced agency experienced due to external constraints such as competing university and accreditation agendas.

I would have to say that the curriculum, there is so much content that we need to cover, whether or not that gets a look in is another thing. It might be easier not to deal with it because “It’s embarrassing or it’s challenging” and people have got other things that they “need to cover” in inverted commas. But I think it’s hugely important that we deal with it because the whole curriculum has aspects of that in it. (John)

Teacher educators might find it easier to avoid addressing racism as it can perceived as a problematic topic. They may also have limited capacity to prioritize the inclusion of anti-racist pedagogy within their units due to a lack of criticality regarding the underlying whiteness of education culture, in which deficit views are held of those who do not identify with the dominant narrative (Vass, 2017). Evoking difficult conversations and confronting deep-rooted biases and systemic issues requires a resilient teacher educator who recognizes that neglecting racism perpetuates harmful practices and contributes to educational inequities.

Teacher educators enacting anti-racist pedagogy disrupt dominant discourses by enhancing preservice teachers’ critical consciousness to recognize and seek action against inequities. To act as agents of change, they facilitate understanding that while an individual may not perceive themselves as racist, the system they operate within has structural injustices which need to be counteracted (Tatum, 2000). Hence, in promoting critical consciousness, anti-racist teacher educators support preservice teachers to develop a deeper understanding of social inequalities, power dynamics, and systemic racism, enabling them to challenge oppressive structures (White, 2022). Notably, the data centre how encouraging preservice teachers to examine inherent bias can be facilitated by sharing personal experiences and modelling critical reflection.

I do is work on myself a lot because I am a middle class, 60-year-old white Australian. I have a lot of racial baggage. One of the first things I do in class is I say, “Hands up if you’re a racist” and put my hand up, because I know that I was brought up in the 60s with some very racially dodgy lessons and that I have to work on myself a lot all the time. The little things pop into my head that I go, “Oh no”, and by being open about this and getting them to acknowledge for themselves their own biases and their own little things that their families have said to them, that’s been part of their layer, that they’ve absorbed these older and racially divisive ideas from their parents very often. (Dawn)

Ongoing critical reflection involves examining personal biases, understanding one’s positionality, and acknowledging any potential trauma or emotional triggers. Examining privilege and positioning within whiteness is crucial to understand how whiteness is perpetuated in dominant narratives and to identify the relative privileges being white may afford (Philips et al., 2019). Interviewees who appeared critically reflexive and voiced examination of their own positionality also evidenced how they facilitated discussion on whiteness and privilege in their teacher education units. In line with this, instilling anti-racist pedagogy was reported to be a continual process of actively engaging with counter narratives.

Everybody’s racist, everybody has a race, that’s how we bought up and until you are in a situation where you actually challenge your understanding and thinking about those things, you just continue that ignorance, so I think the only recommendation I would have is for us to keep challenging students to see those things, when you hear it and call it out. (Tom)

Challenging dominant discourses and providing alternative perspectives support the exploration of diverse voices and lived experiences that have been historically marginalized. Teacher educators enacting anti-racist pedagogy challenge preservice teachers’ assumptions of positivist thinking to move away from a banking style of education (Freire, 2000). Interviewees who engaged with anti-racist pedagogy noted how they critically analysed their unit curriculum and pedagogical practices for biases, omissions, and Anglocentric perspectives. They actively worked to counteract the framing of marginalized groups in deficit-oriented ways by calling out stereotypes which reinforce power imbalances and perpetuate systemic inequities. Critiquing privilege and history facilitate the development of racial literacy (Utt & Tochluk, 2020). However, the data convey the examination of social constructions of race and whiteness within education is not without it challenges.

You have quite a few experiences where the student’s response is “Oh, I read the chapter on Whiteness in education, I felt it was completely racist against white people”. And you kind of try to work them through this sort of thinking, but I guess it sort of highlights there are just certain deeply ingrained ways around thinking what the “norm” is, that are very sort of difficult to move beyond. I think the work is there, as always, we could do more. (Hana)

Addressing whiteness requires resilience on the part of the teacher educator who may open themselves up for conflict and detrimental unit feedback (Schulz & Fane, 2015). Interviewees who sought to challenge assumptions surrounding race and whiteness reported resistance and defensiveness from preservice teachers. Preservice teachers were perceived as often being uncomfortable in confronting their own privileges or acknowledging the systemic advantages associated with whiteness.

I was staggered because this preservice teacher never said anything in class. But she had clearly been simmering away, resenting a lot of what was going on, the way I was valuing people who are agreeing with me. And she wrote even in the sides of the page about what a dreadful teacher I was and that I favoured people who were from minority groups. And it really brought out a lot of resentment. So, I tried to sift through the pedagogies and the reflective kinds of perspectives that I needed to take on, I think, to process the kind of resentment and the way then I think firmed up her prejudices, I don’t think I challenged them at all. Maybe nothing I could have done or anyone else would have. It is easy just to say, “Well, she shouldn’t be a teacher as far as I’m concerned, because she’s so unquestioning of white privilege”, but we know that there will always be people out there who like that. So, are we doing anything to seriously change the fabric of teachers? (Marie)

Preservice teachers may lack the capacities to critically reflect on whiteness or positionality which could have the unintended consequence of reinforcing bias. As a result, teacher educators risk negative unit reviews as they attempt to shift preservice teachers’ perspectives on whiteness and privilege. Confronting perspectives on racism and whiteness can be unsettling for preservice teachers who feel threatened by discussions challenging their existing beliefs or privileges (Shim, 2020). Exploring whiteness can evoke uncomfortable emotions as it challenges individuals’ self-perception and identity and can result in white fragility, when even a slight amount of racial stress provokes an intense reaction, such as rage, withdrawal, or guilt (DiAngelo, 2011, p. 54). Thus, teacher educator resilience is integral to anti-racist pedagogy. Interviewees who expressed a deep commitment to anti-racist pedagogy conveyed how they continually sought to facilitate dialogue on race, privilege, and equity to prompt realizations that normed practices may be inherently bias.

2010 was the first time I started teaching subjects at uni and I encountered a lot of very blatant racism from my students. They would say things like “Why do we have to learn about Aboriginals? We should be learning about Asian people more because we’re more likely to be teaching Asians”. They would say “Aboriginal people get everything” and “The Stolen Generation was a hundred years ago, why should we be learning about that?” And these ideas were just parroting the stuff that they heard from their parents. What I found was that the racism was widespread, but it was shallow, so that over two or three weeks with coming back at them with bits and pieces, you could see the light bulbs going off all over the place.

In my class this young man who was one of the more egregious at the start, he got really worked up and he said, “I work in a retail chain store and we have a code when Aboriginal people walk into the store, the code goes out and we have to follow these people as they walk around store”. And for the first time, he was questioning that and saying, “That’s really racist”. I said “Yes, yes it is”. He ended up going up and working up in the Northern Territory he was so fired up about the injustice of it all. (Dawn)

Critically reflective teacher educators provide a safe space to explore hegemonic narratives and foster preservice teachers’ agency as advocates for social justice (Paris, 2021). In supporting preservice teachers to develop a critical lens through questioning educational policies and curricula, they encourage recognition of the ways in which racism can be embedded in Australian practices.

Discussion

Much of Australia’s colonial history has been disguised or filtered through the lens of the whiteness, reflecting a lack of urgency on the part of many to readdress the power imbalance. Such a contested history means dialogue on racism can be perceived as sensitive or best avoided (Kowal & Watt, 2018). Yet the data illustrate the potential for the enactment of anti-racist pedagogy across teacher education programmes through developing preservice teachers’ understanding and critique of the histories which have shaped their identity.

Teacher educators must acknowledge racism is present within the classroom and so the question is not if racism is happening, but how it is happening (Shah & Coles, 2020). Whilst interviewed teacher educators recognized the importance of teaching on race and racism, not all incorporated these themes in their units. Teacher educators may justify race-evasiveness by claiming preservice teacher cohorts make dialogue on race or racism problematic or unnecessary or by stating its irrelevance to the unit they teach (Chang-Bacon, 2022). Within diverse school contexts the exploration of white teacher racial identity development is more apparent, although it is typically disregarded within mainly white school contexts (Garlough & Savitz, 2022).

Interviewees who instilled anti-racist pedagogy in their teacher education units reported how they explicitly called out discrimination and bias. They demonstrated ongoing critical reflexivity and understanding of their own positionality, both pertinent to facilitating dialogue on racism. Teacher educators’ critical epistemic reflexivity encourages an examination of ways of doing and knowing by engaging with literature which exalts critical consciousness and provides a platform for disrupting inequality and power imbalances in teacher education (Rowan et al., 2021). In decentring whiteness within Australian teacher education, it is necessary to reframe dominant narratives which teach and assess students against a default setting of whiteness, raising the issue of what knowledge, language, and cultural practices are valued.

For teacher educators enacting anti-racist pedagogy there are multiple challenges, particularly as the very concept of “Australia as a nation state” requires ongoing and significant investment in whiteness and the perpetuation of racialized others within a racialized social system (Seet & Paradies, 2018, p. 450). Dialogue on whiteness and race can provoke discomfort and resistance (Aronson & Meyers, 2020; Shim, 2020). Within Australian teacher education, it has historically been avoided to avert conflict, resulting in intentionally missed teachable moments (Schulz & Fane, 2015). Teacher educators who teach on themes of whiteness, racism, and privilege are subject to unfavourable student unit evaluations and criticism even though scholarship is based on years of empirical studies, as, unlike other disciplines, preservice teachers may believe content is reflective of opinions and can be dismissed (Miller & Starker-Glass, 2018).

Anti-racist pedagogy fosters criticality and decentres authority so preservice teachers are empowered to connect theory to practice (Freire, 2000). Collaborative, dialogue-centred pedagogy can support understanding of broader societal dynamics and mitigate the emotional burden of personal experiences (Holmes et al., 2021). The sharing of counter narratives can highlight injustice and motivate resistance towards the normalization of whiteness. Critical dialoguing through Freire’s (2000) culture circles can transform praxis and recentre marginalized knowledge by provoking action on issues of oppression (Souto-Manning, 2019).

Anti-racist pedagogy can be employed through instilling units with content that links historical institutional racism with its influence on current policy agendas. Becoming educated on First Nations Australians history supports the incorporation of non-dominant narratives into unit curriculum. Promoting unit resources which reflect othered voices and experiences helps centre anti-racist pedagogy and emphasizes foundational knowledge, critical thinking skills, and practical strategies for preservice teachers (Kishimoto, 2018). Considering the intersection of race with other factors of social justice such as class, gender, dis/ability, and so on moves beyond political rhetoric to address racism and whiteness (Twine, 2004). Likewise, exploring ethnic and racial identity dismantles normativism and facilitates the construction of positive racial identity grounded in allyship (Tatum, 2000). Rather than a sole focus on trauma, teacher educators can highlight the resilience, achievements, and contributions of marginalized communities.

Evidently, effective anti-racist work requires dedication and critical reflexivity from teacher educators, however, teacher education programmes must go further than standalone “diversity” units (Goodwin & Darity, 2019) and begin to include a more structured learning sequence on anti-racist pedagogy. The teaching of standalone diversity units is problematic as it reinforces the perception of diversities as separate uncomplex categories and hinders understanding of the myriad opportunities for privilege and discrimination to occur (Liddicoat, 2022). Thus, anti-racist pedagogy must be holistically integrated throughout teacher education programme curricula, rather than being taught in separate units. Multiple opportunities for dialogue on racial injustice and whiteness throughout teacher education units would support preservice teachers in recognizing hegemonic narratives.

Universities need to invest in professional learning opportunities for teacher educators to deepen understanding of anti-racist pedagogy. Although teacher educators may possess strong intent to make a difference, if structural injustices exist at a federal and state level, then change is challenging. Consequently, effective anti-racist pedagogy requires more than individual teacher educators, it must be supported by university leadership and government policy. Centring anti-racist practices in strategy and policy ensures a strong commitment to dismantling culturally ingrained practices which uphold inequitable systems.

A significant issue is the sheer lack of system accountability as neither teacher educators nor teacher education providers are held accountable if they do not attend to anti-racist pedagogy. Anti-racist pedagogy is not currently integrated throughout the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) which does little to encourage the development of preservice teachers’ anti-racist praxis within teacher education programmes. In light of this, the APST may be viewed as both enabling and constraining; enabling as they create awareness for teaching diversity and can lead to programme redesign if certain standards are not covered, yet constraining when diversity simply becomes a tick box exercise and is tokenistically addressed (Ryan et al., 2020). This can be seen in the APST 1.4 and 2.4 assessment criteria for graduate teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2018, p. 5) which lack reference to whiteness despite suggested teacher education content as “what constitutes racism and anti-racism strategies, policies, and legislation”. Explicit direction on anti-racist pedagogy must be embedded in the APST to include robust teaching on themes of whiteness, power, and privilege as these are central to a socially just education.

Knowledge generated from this study may be transferred across different teacher education programmes to enhance anti-racist pedagogy, however, educational contexts are diverse and social desirability bias might influence participants’ self-reported beliefs and practices so findings may differ.

Conclusion

Australia’s institutions have typically reflected policies which have benefited those associated with whiteness and negatively impacted those not supported by hegemonic narratives (Ben et al., 2022). Given racism remains an ongoing issue in Australia (Elias et al., 2020), teacher educators must actively examine how racism manifests itself within education and work to dissuade race-evasive practices.

Australian teacher education would benefit from consistent dialogue around white hegemony and its historical and social constructions as systemic issues, as well as from adopting a clear anti-racist pedagogical approach. A focus on the deconstruction of power and privilege may reduce the silence surrounding notions of whiteness and lead to a more socially just education system (Schulz & Fane, 2015).

When teacher educators do not take an active stand against systemic whiteness, privilege, and racism, they consciously or unconsciously support a racist system (Tatum, 2000). Anti-racist pedagogy is vital in teacher education because a lack exposure to alternative discourse on anti-racism fails to call out bias. As Tanner states “whiteness is a white problem” (2019, p. 182). As such, it should not be left to be resolved by those who do not profit from it. Simply caring about social justice or adopting a tokenistic approach to diversity are wholly inadequate if dominant norms are not questioned and challenged. Teacher educators have a moral responsibility to expose whiteness and racism and to push for education which truly supports all learners.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Sasha Janes

Dr Sasha Janes has worked extensively in the field of TESOL and in promoting inclusive learning spaces in primary education. Her research interests include exploring culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies and anti-racist praxis within teacher education.